Friday, February 19, 2016

2 19 16 morning call

A Hi-Tech rental customer enjoys the high quality of the rental gear at Hookipa yesterday. Photo by Jimmie Hepp.


Today NW and Waimea won't add any info, so let's only have a look at Pauwela which at 4am reads
5.6ft @ 9s from 55° (ENE)
3.6ft @ 11s from 344° (NNW)
2.8ft @ 5s from 62° (ENE)
The blue graph shows the windswell coming down while there's still a hint of NNW energy. I didn't get in the water yesterday, this morning I'll surf Hookipa no matter the conditions.


Wind map shows a fairly big NW fetch starting to make its way towards us. When a fetch moves in the same direction of the swell it is generating, it's called captured. Since the wind will keep building the same seas following them in the their path, these situations usually mean big waves.
This fetch is going to get very close to us and vicinity of the source is another important factor for wave size.
As a result, Surfline translates the output of the WW3 model as 22f 15s from 330 on Monday afternoon. Honolua should be firing.
Next big swell right behind it with 24f 18s from 325 on Thursday evening.
These numbers are HUGE, but this winter has got us accustomed to them.

I had a full two weeks run of Windity and loved what I saw. The waves are going to be really big fpr a long time and even though I'm not a big wave lover, there's always somewhere where to find the right size. What I liked the most is to see two deep low pressures dancing with each other and feeding on each other taking complete control of the whole north Pacific. This is something that Pat Caldwell calls a Japanese name, which my 4 leftover neurons can't remember at this time. The only names that come up in my mind are Arakawa (famous Oahu shaper) or Hanzawa (gas station in Haiku).
I hope he's gonna mention that in his next forecast, otherwise that is going to drive me crazy.

Local wind direction seems much better than the past few days, even though the intensity is less. It'll depend on the cloud cover.

1 comment:

(Ben) Jamin Jones said...

Fujiwhara effect
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujiwhara_effect